Delicious

I took the scene of Cinderella, because I think that for me growing up, that was this thing where the person who seemed, in the story, not worthy ended up going to the ball. Ended up getting all the good stuff. That’s kind of a mythic and metaphorical story that many cultures have…. I think of all the people who maybe find themselves not in the body they think they should be in. You have to have a way to mitigate that. And so clothing becomes that. And so this piece here, David Rue and Randy Ford, Randy, I think, identifies as she now and David is he/him, but they’re very fluid in how they both face the world. And so, in this image that I did of them, thinking about their dreaming, they’re wearing this beautiful red dress that belongs to a mutual friend of ours…. And I saw that image and I thought, “They’re going to the ball, man.”

“Packaged Black is about how I think—in this case, Black people—how we use clothing and fashion and body adornment and covering to assist us in our everyday movement through the world. And how it becomes part of our arsenal of survival.”

—Barbara Earl Thomas

Packaged Black: Derrick Adams and Barbara Earl Thomas
Oct 2–May 1, Henry Art Gallery